Nezzy on Finding a Vision of Their Own

"People absolutely have tried to dissuade me, but it never scared me."

It seems as though we might finally be on the precipice of purposeful pop’s return. While the term has largely been co-opted this year to describe any commercially viable tune that resonates with or directly addresses a “woke” audience, for those who came of age in the mid 00s, purposeful pop meant uncompromising vulnerability. We let our eyeliner run while screaming to tracks addressing growing pains, societal pressures and lost love in an unashamed embrace of emotion. Today, in the time fake news and filters, it’s no wonder we’re becoming increasingly nostalgic for the honesty of emo — and there’s no better artist to lead the way than Nezzy.

The Toronto author-artist, born Inez Genereux, uniquely blends emo-pop, rap, and alt-rock (with a sprinkle of 90s grunge melded, a little trademark 80s synth and a touch of reggae for fun) in a magical amalgam. It’s a sound as organic as it is infectious and, when coupled with the singer’s lyrical exposé of their own self (particularly their sobriety), is impossible not to connect to. We caught up with the young Canadian to talk the importance of embracing pain and confronting fear, as well as the struggle of making music on their own terms.

Teen Vogue: You depict the millennial experience in a way that's so raw and relatable, what attracts you to your subject matter?

Nezzy: I feel my feelings deeply. I think the essence of being a millennial is the rawness — there are a massive variety of ways to be a person and to me the millennial experience is the search for your own personal truth. I am attracted to my subject matter because I like high-intensity experiences. I think this actually comes along with having been sober for a while. When you really start to see life for all of its complexities and absurdities from a clear perspective it’s actually really trippy, like finding pleasure in benign experiences.

TV: It’s so impressive you’re sober, particularly when it feels like we’re all trying to find some mechanism to cope with the hopelessness of our political landscape. How do you deal with that in a field ridden with substance abuse?

N: My hope for people is that they know they have options. When I see the way people are taught to navigate their experiences, it is always paired with alcohol and drugs. People have a difficult time connecting empathetically with each other. Drugs and alcohol are a direct factor of that.
For so much of my life, starting from when I was a child, I felt like I carried this discomfort around with me constantly. Now I call it psychic pain, but before I could name it literally plagued my life for years. Getting f*cked up was a very easy way out of that, while I could still be externally validated by other people. Now...I don’t want to pretend that those ugly, difficult feelings aren't there. It's the same thing with that emo “embrace the pain” mentality.

TV: It’s funny because we can all remember I time when emo was so prevalent in pop. Do you see it coming back in a big way?

N: When I reach for something in my emotional tool kit, you know to really get the emotional chug going, I think of emo music. But emo has gone though many different cycles, I won't bore you with a history of emo music, but it has definitely been simultaneously on the fringes as well as in the middle of popular music for a couple of decades. Take the drumming and beat percussion off of “Give Up” by the Postal Service — it is so cool. There's like some drum and bass and crazy break downs in that album. it's close to a trap beat. That album came out in 2003 and it still hits so hard.

TV: Surely, though, injecting so much of your personal life in your music is really intimidating prospect. Did anyone try to dissuade you, as an artist, from being so vulnerable?

N: People absolutely have tried to dissuade me, but it never scared me. It scared everyone else. Being vulnerable is frightening to other people because like I said, most of us aren't equipped to deal with each other empathetically. I was trying to live my truth but I hadn't been given the tools to unpack my baggage from all the harm I had experienced in my life. It very hard for me to authentically connect with other people. When I woke up to the fact that the first step is being honest about your struggle, the floodgates opened. The fear of vulnerability is real for everyone but fear will keep people from embracing all the tragedies and triumphs that make us human.

TV: Do you need to be in that really emotional place to write best or do your best work? How do you approach making a project?

N: I used to think it was during a high or intense emotional time that I made my best work, experiencing some kind of pain and suffering, or falling in love, you know, which can also be painful.

I was used to letting my emotions get the best of me, they literally made my best work. Then there’s this other way of making work, which is having this very disciplined daily practice, working steadily and making gradual progress. Which I thought I was very bad at, so I never tried to work that way. I was motivated by discomfort. Now I understand that you have to utilize both styles of working. I am the kind of person who has to be dragged kicking and screaming to finish something. For a very long time I thought I was "bad" because I'm distracted and disorganized. But I make my goals small and attainable, and don't compare them to what anyone else is doing. I have a very "stay in my own lane" approach to life these days.

TV: There’s also that added pressure in the fact there are so many artists trying to make it, everyone is perpetually self-promoting. What is most frustrating about coming up in this climate, or the industry in general?

N: Yeah, everybody is trying to be “the One.” But the truth is not everyone is going to be “the One,” and what makes one person more deserving of "making it" is totally beyond me. There is a lot of space for many people with many important messages. Music is a vehicle for expressing what otherwise couldn't just be plainly said. It all comes back to connecting with each other and believing that everyone has something important to offer. I think one to one, person to person contact is the best of way effecting change —two people connecting individually on a radical idea. At the same time I hope that people with massive platforms are aware of how much power they have.

TV: Tell me a little of your experience as a femme in music, have you had to battle to become the artist you envisioned?

N: I could spend time thinking about how the ways being gendered as a woman makes it more challenging to be taken seriously, but I try not to. Instead I turn my thoughts to the way the subtler, more sensitive parts of myself that are often looked over, can be massively beneficial to my art.

For years, my idea of what it meant to be successful were based on values that weren't really my own. Finding a vision of myself has taken a lot of work, undoing and unlearning other people’s ideas of happiness. One thing I discovered in this unlearning was that, in being supposed to look and act based on societies standards, I feel dysphoric towards my gender. I have the lived experience of a woman, a femme, but I feel like there is something missing from my understanding of what it means to be a “woman.” I have this voice within me that grows louder the harder I listen to it, and tells me when I am working with people who respect and appreciate me for who I am.

TV: What do you hope fans will really take away from this recent offering? Can we expect a larger project on the horizon?

N: You don't have to be “the One.” Fear will try to stop you from being who you want to be, but if you can get a little bit good at staying true to your heart even in the presence of fear you are doing a great job. You can definitely expect something more from me, I can't wait to share more with you.

TV: Is that how you hope the world sees Nezzy, the artist? Someone who refuses to be afraid?